gsteemso
Well-known member
I have recently acquired a PowerBook 540c. As so many of us have found, the case plastics are so feeble as to not reliably stand up to disassembly of the machine, even when great care is taken. I am strongly motivated to have more durable replacements fabricated.
Many threads here in the past have discussed this. The consensus appears to be that 3D printing is the most affordable solution, for which the only difficult prerequisite is that a 3D computer model needs to be produced for each individual piece of plastic. Once such a model is in hand, replacement cases can be produced in all sorts of materials, limited only by the quality of the 3D printer available.
There are three requirements to produce these models—a template, for which I initially volunteer my nearly mint 540c, and I’m sure many others among us would be willing to put forward other models to scan; a 3D scanner, which at least one person on these forums has volunteered the use of in the past; and a human who is willing to actually do the work to turn the scans into usable computer models.
That last one is the sticking point. Do we have any volunteers? Failing that, would a bounty or Kickstarter or Patreon or some such campaign to pay someone to do it be realistic? I’m willing to sort out the administrivia of setting that up if we need to, though of course a volunteer to just do the work would be a lot simpler.
Many threads here in the past have discussed this. The consensus appears to be that 3D printing is the most affordable solution, for which the only difficult prerequisite is that a 3D computer model needs to be produced for each individual piece of plastic. Once such a model is in hand, replacement cases can be produced in all sorts of materials, limited only by the quality of the 3D printer available.
There are three requirements to produce these models—a template, for which I initially volunteer my nearly mint 540c, and I’m sure many others among us would be willing to put forward other models to scan; a 3D scanner, which at least one person on these forums has volunteered the use of in the past; and a human who is willing to actually do the work to turn the scans into usable computer models.
That last one is the sticking point. Do we have any volunteers? Failing that, would a bounty or Kickstarter or Patreon or some such campaign to pay someone to do it be realistic? I’m willing to sort out the administrivia of setting that up if we need to, though of course a volunteer to just do the work would be a lot simpler.